The temperature might have dropped below zero as the wind wailed Friday, but the ice-carving teams in Rice Park loved it.
“Yesterday was too warm,” said Amy Hayes of the almost-above-freezing temperatures Thursday, the first day of the St. Paul Winter Carnival’s ice-carving competition. “It was too warm to get the blocks to stick together.”
The Mounds View resident was working on a “Last Supper” sculpture Friday morning — she’s teamed up with longtime carver “Buzzsaw” Bob Halverson to give shape to Leonardo da Vinci’s 15th-century mural — and said the arriving cold snap would be good for the carvings.
“Hopefully, they should last throughout the week, instead of being gone two days after they’re carved, which is usual,” she said.
Event coordinator Douglas Spindler agreed.
“We’ve been blessed with the weather, because it’s perfect,” he said Friday afternoon.
Daytime high temperatures are expected to remain in the single digits through the weekend, with dangerously cold wind chills of 25 below or lower.
Despite the cold, Winter Carnival officials said Friday that today’s 2 p.m. King Boreas Grande Day Parade in downtown St. Paul will go on as planned.
The conditions did prompt an announcement that the Securian Half Marathon, a Winter Carnival event at 9 a.m. today in downtown, will be shortened to a quarter-marathon for the safety of participants and volunteers.
Also, the start time for the Governor’s Cup, a 25K cross country ski race today at Camp Ripley, will be pushed back from 11 a.m. to noon.
On “The Last Supper” sculpture, Halverson and Hayes were carving Jesus and his Twelve Apostles out of 20 300-pound ice blocks. Twenty-four hours after the team’s carving began, the heads of Bartholomew, James and Andrew jutted out of the glassy mass. The rest of the figures — Judas Iscariot, Peter, John, Jesus, Thomas, James the Greater, Philip, Matthew, Jude Thaddeus and Simon the Zealot — took form later Friday. Everyone would have to be in shape for judging at 9 a.m. today.
Ten teams are competing in this year’s multi-block carving bout, with other entries including tiki totems, larger-than-life fish and ice anglers.
Eagan resident Lisa Carr was out admiring the artwork Friday with her two children — Annika, 6, and Pascal, 2 — as part of her daughter’s home-school art class.
“It’s a chance to show them something being created,” said Carr, as she pointed out a competitor chiseling a tree limb on the “Alice in Wonderland” entry.
Also, she said, her husband had proposed to her in front of a “big fancy” sculpture in 1992 — the year the Super Bowl was at the Metrodome — so it brought back good memories to poke around the park in single-digit temps.
After judging, ice-carving winners will be honored at an awards ceremony at 4 p.m. Tuesday at McGovern’s Pub and Restaurant in St. Paul.
Copyright 2009 Pioneer Press.